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Yes, and I suspect the main complication is the learner. I instinctively teach socratically, even when I don't mean to. But when I was a post-doc, I had a stu

Yes, and I suspect the main complication is the learner. I instinctively teach socratically, even when I don't mean to. But when I was a post-doc, I had a student who usually couldn't answer my questions or make any progress no matter how much I tried to break a problem into bite sized pieces. Then along came the proffessor, who would just calmly and simply tell the guy the thing that I had been trying to explain socratically. And the student had no trouble understanding.

kwhitefoot 9y ago
> And the student had no trouble understanding. But did he still understand it a week later?
flukus 9y ago
Did he really understand or could he just parrot an answer? Generally I find if you can't step through with someone taking the socratic approach then you don't truly understand it. Not to say there's not room for facts, particularly at the boundaries of our knowledge, but from the description I get the impression that you were trying to teach and the professor wanted someone to recite.
- groby_b 9y ago
  For some, understanding grows with reciting. There's nothing wrong with memorization iff it is followed by understanding. And if you "step through", it's not a socratic approach any more. It's a test.
- adrianratnapala 9y ago
  There is no question of parroting, as these was not classroom exercises, but discussions between grown-ups trying to grapple with something difficult in the laboratory. After the Professor's explicit explanations, the student was able to carry on intelligently with the discussion and did not get stuck as he did with my Socratic explanations. That still leaves the possibility that he only understood things in a rote-ish way. But if so, that was enough to get him unblocked and thinking about the other related stuff we were talking about. That's valuable in itself, and will contribute to his understanding of the original sticking point.

kwhitefoot 9y ago

> And the student had no trouble understanding. But did he still understand it a week later?

flukus 9y ago

Did he really understand or could he just parrot an answer? Generally I find if you can't step through with someone taking the socratic approach then you don't truly understand it. Not to say there's not room for facts, particularly at the boundaries of our knowledge, but from the description I get the impression that you were trying to teach and the professor wanted someone to recite.

groby_b 9y ago
For some, understanding grows with reciting. There's nothing wrong with memorization iff it is followed by understanding. And if you "step through", it's not a socratic approach any more. It's a test.
adrianratnapala 9y ago
There is no question of parroting, as these was not classroom exercises, but discussions between grown-ups trying to grapple with something difficult in the laboratory. After the Professor's explicit explanations, the student was able to carry on intelligently with the discussion and did not get stuck as he did with my Socratic explanations. That still leaves the possibility that he only understood things in a rote-ish way. But if so, that was enough to get him unblocked and thinking about the other related stuff we were talking about. That's valuable in itself, and will contribute to his understanding of the original sticking point.